This blog was started to make fun of the Homewrecking-Slut. I don't talk about her much anymore. I do other things with the blog now, but for the most part it's sort of a diary. So if you don't care what I had for lunch, and the current post doesn't interest you, maybe you should check out something in the popular posts section.

Monday, July 30, 2007

We're having more weird weather here. It just seemed to come out of nowhere. And I was nearly struck by lightning when I was writing this.

I found this on someone else's blog. I don't even read this blog, I just stopped by from another blog and saw this.

First, I'm just going to have a copy of the list without doing anything to it or admitting what I may or may not have done. That way, if someone wants to copy it they won't have to go back and delete the remarks.

Copy this entire list to your blog/journal.BOLD everything that is true about you.Leave plain anything that is not true about you.Put an asterisk next to anything you would like to be true.

1. I have had sex while wearing a blindfold.

2. I have blindfolded someone else during sex.

3. I have had sex while watching porn.

4. I have had sex while surfing porn on the Internet.

5. I sleep better after sex.

6. There are some nights I cannot sleep without sex or masturbating.

7. The bed is NOT my most favorite place to have sex.

8. I am turned on knowing someone is watching me masturbate.

9. I have had sex knowning someone else was watching.

10. I have watched a couple have sex

11. I have masturbated for someone over a web cam.

12. I have had sex over a web cam.

13. I have had a one night stand.

14. I have been tied up during sex.

15. I have had sex with someone who was tied up.

16. I have dripped wax onto a lover's body.

17. I have had a lover drip wax onto my body.

18. I have a foot fetish.

19. I have a leather fetish.

20. I have a tickle fetish.

21. I like being choked during sex.

22. I have had phone sex.

23. I have erotic art on display somewhere in my residence.

24. I enjoy nudie magazines.

25. Erotic toys are a regular part of my budget.

26. I think PLAYBOY is tame, maybe even boring.

27. I have clicked on porn links in my email.

28. I have watched more than one gay/lesbian porn video.

29. Much of what I know about sex comes from porn.

30. I have given/received a facial.

31. I think we should do more to understand the cultures of sex.

32. I would participate in sex research given the opportunity.

33. My current lover does not sufficiently meet my sexual needs.

34. I currently have a "crush" on someone of the same sex.

35. I want to have sex with someone on my blogroll

36. I have had sex at my place of employment.

37. I am often disappointed in my sexual relationships.

38. Some people might describe me as a nymphomaniac.

39. I am difficult to live with if I'm not having sex on a regular basis.

40. I sleep better with someone snuggled up next to me.

41. I have had sex under water.

42. I have had sex in the snow.

43. I am in a polyamorous relationship.

44. I have to have music playing while having sex.

45. I have had more than ten orgasms in one night.

46. I have flashed strangers.

47. I have given sex as a gift.

48. I have set-up a three-way for my lover.

49. I have made a video having sex.

50. I have taken nude pictures

51. I have had more than one partner in a 24 hour period

52. I am a member of the Mile-High Club.

53. I have taken a trip longer than an hour just for a booty call

54. I stopped during this list to have sex.

Okay, now it's time for my personal thoughts on the list:

3. I have had sex while watching porn. No. But I've had sex after reading Laurell K. Hamilton so that my partner didn't have to do much work.

5. I sleep better after sex. Of course. But to be specific, I'd sleep better after having a bath after I've had sex.

6. There are some nights I cannot sleep without sex or masturbating. Are there other kinds of nights? Does counting sheep actually work for anybody?

7. The bed is NOT my most favorite place to have sex. Well, actually, I think it is. As far as I can remember, it is the only place I've had sex. I refuse to do it in a car, and any other place that I've offered did not meet with my partner's approval.

8. I am turned on knowing someone is watching me masturbate. No. Masturbating is for me, not anyone who might be watching. Mostly, so I can sleep. Why would I want anyone to watch? Especially when I'm trying to get to sleep?

9. I have had sex knowning someone else was watching. No. But his mother did walk in once when we were starting to do something. I pretended that I was asleep and she went away.

11. I have masturbated for someone over a web cam. 12. I have had sex over a web cam. No to both of those. It's amazing to me that anyone would send that sort of thing electronically anyway. It would be my luck that I would set it up wrong like that guy on American Pie. No way.

13. I have had a one night stand. No, I have not. It's always very strange to me that people brag about having one. Why would you ever want anyone to know that? If you've had a one night stand, either it wasn't any good for you, or it wasn't any good for your partner. It was so bad for someone that it isn't worth doing a second time. To be fair, I almost offered for someone who was visiting from Boston. I mean, it wouldn't have been like he was dumping me, he was just going back to Boston. We decided it was better that we just stayed friends. And there was one time that I might have wished was just the one time. The second time wasn't any better.

14. I have been tied up during sex. 15. I have had sex with someone who was tied up. Not me. If there are restriants that have some way to get out of them in an emergency, I'd probably try that. But I was never with anyone who wanted to restrain me that wasn't insulted by my need to be able to get out of the restraints on my own. There was some cop show where they were looking for a rapist, but it turned out that the girl just made up the story after her boyfriend was run over by a bus and she was just too embarrassed to explain that her boyfriend had left her tied up in the room. I couldn't take a chance on something like that happening to me.

16. I have dripped wax onto a lover's body. Well, I think maybe I did, but I don't think it was on purpose.

17. I have had a lover drip wax onto my body. Again, I don't remember it being a planned thing.

18. I have a foot fetish. 19. I have a leather fetish. 20. I have a tickle fetish. No. I do not have a fetish that I am aware of. Though I would have liked to try some costumes and stuff like that.

22. I have had phone sex. No. I like real sex.

23. I have erotic art on display somewhere in my residence. I wouldn't say it was on display, and it doesn't met many people's definition of erotic. But my husband has done some art on the computer.

25. **Erotic toys are a regular part of my budget. I only recently found the store, so it's not part of my budget. Unless you could maybe count Spencer's, but I mostly went there for other stuff. Mostly. But no, still not part of my regular budget.

30. I have given/received a facial. I'm not sure what that means. Is it just oral sex? 69 dude!

32. I would participate in sex research given the opportunity. That depends on the research and what I'm expected to do. Take a survey? Sure. Try out a new lubricant in the privacy of my own home. Sure. Be in one of Dr. Kinsey's sex flims? Not going to happen.

33. My current lover does not sufficiently meet my sexual needs.That would take too long to explain, so we'll skip this one.

35. I want to have sex with someone on my blogroll. I don't have a blogroll.

36. I have had sex at my place of employment. I am unemployed.

38. Some people might describe me as a nymphomaniac. Well, someone might. But it's a normal hormone rush, and it's pretty much on schedule. And it's unbelievable that I actually got complaints over it.

39. I am difficult to live with if I'm not having sex on a regular basis. You think?

40. **I sleep better with someone snuggled up next to me. I sleep better with someone in the bed with me, but for a good night's sleep he needs to be on his side of the bed.

41. **I have had sex under water. I offered to try to have sex in the ocean, but no.

42. I have had sex in the snow. What is snow?

45. I have had more than ten orgasms in one night. Due to someone not showing the least bit of interest in the hormone rush, I'm not sure I've had much more than that a week.

47. I have given sex as a gift. I have done sexual things that are not my favorite on someone's birthday. Does that count?

48. I have set-up a three-way for my lover. No. I jokingly said that we should have sex while a certain person watched, so that she would get it through her thick head that we were not over. But, she's pretty thick (in more ways than one) and I guess that wouldn't have made a difference to her anyway.

49. **I have made a video having sex. I think that porno tapes that you've made yourself are the only kind that you should watch. But no, I haven't. And I won't now, because that sort of thing requires trust.

50. **I have taken nude pictures. Not only have I not taken nude pictures, but I do not have any erotic pictures of myself that I have wanted for more than ten years, and my husband is a professional photographer. So I guess that I'm never going to get those pictures. Again, that sort of thing requires trust.

51. I have had more than one partner in a 24 hour period. No. I felt bad enough that I kissed two boys in the same weekend.

52. I am a member of the Mile-High Club. No. That would be worse than doing it in a car.

54. I stopped during this list to have sex. I was alone in the house, and it wasn't time to sleep yet, so no, I did not.

Saturday, July 28, 2007

Okay, this is supposed to be a catching up post. First, I have to figure out where I left off. I'll get to the zombies later. If you really don't care about the trip, just scroll down to the stuff that happened while we were away.

The Trip to Shreveport...

I've already said how bored I was in the motel room in Arkansas two weeks ago, but after being home a few days I decided that going to Shreveport for a week didn't sound so bad. By Saturday, I had definitely decided to go. We planned to leave Sunday morning, but my brother called and asked if he were coming to his birthday lunch. That was the first I had heard anything about a birthday lunch. It wasn't actually his birthday, but with everyone's schedules the way that they are, sometimes the birthday lunch is off by as much as a month. Probably, Sunday was the best day for my sister's husband, and he has to out of town a lot too. So we didn't ask if it could be rescheduled or anything. We were just going to Shreveport, and it's not that far away, and we could leave after lunch.

So we went to Mimi's Cafe, which is a chain, but it's new here. Everyone said nice things about it, but I don't think that any of us had ever been there before. And it didn't seem like my brother's kind of thing at all. There was a big crowd and a half hour wait for the table, and then there was a bit of confusion and like three or four different people were waiting on us. Mostly, we were not overly impressed with the place. But, all six of us were together, which doesn't seem to happen that often.

Somehow it did not get through to the rest of them that we were going out of town that day. My brother reminded us to come on over at the usual time that night. Sorry, we're on our way to Shreveport. When? As soon as we go home and get a few things. And then my mom wanted something, after I've just said that we're going out of town, and she still doesn't get that we mean today.

So we go home and put the suitcases and the knitting machine in the car. And the place is a mess, and nothing we can do in the next hour or so will even make a dent in it, so we just leave all of it and look the door.

I bought some lottery tickets on the road, and I bought some different lottery tickets when we got to Shreveport. None of them won anything. Next time.

So the company only pays up to fifty dollars plus tax per night for motel rooms. They don't pay for meals, so we try to look for places with free breakfast. And if we go over the fifty dollar limit without a really good reason, we have to pay the difference, and taking your spouse along does not count as a really good reason. So we try to use the little coupon books that they give you at the tourist info places.

For some reason, my husband usually stays at the same place when he goes to Shreveport. But he doesn't like the place that much, and I didn't understand why he kept staying there if he thought it was a flea bag. It's not so bad, he says. There's a free hot breakfast.

But he doesn't like the place that much, for some reason that he can't seem to explain, so I look in the coupon book for a better place. There are two Days Inn coupons and a coupon for a Ramada Inn and a coupon for the place he doesn't like that much, and then maybe there are a couple more coupons that are out of our price range. The Ramada Inn has a free hot breakfast, a hot tub, and Internet access. Sounds good to me.

When we get there they say that we can only use the coupon for the first night, and that the regular room rate is about twenty-five dollars more. Since we plan to be there for five days, that's about a hundred dollars too much. So we head for a Days Inn.

The Days Inn doesn't have any non-smoking rooms left. The other Days Inn is about twenty miles away and we decide to skip it. There are plenty of other motels nearby, but this whole thing is starting to seem familiar to my husband, and we decide just to go to his usual place.

And it doesn't look like a flea bag at all. It's a pretty big place, and it has two outdoor pools and it's across the street from what used to be the Isle of Capri Casino. The lobby looks nice, and it has a Chinese restaurant. I just can't see why he didn't like the place that much.

So we go to the front desk and give the lady a coupon and she asks what kind of room we would want. So we would need a non-smoking room, prefer a king size bed and a micro-fridge.

Only weekly rentals come with a micro-fridge.

Okay, how much is the weekly rate?

$250.00 plus tax.

So I just think that's perfect. At fifty dollars plus tax per night for five nights, that's exactly the limit of what the company will pay. And then if we want, we can stay for the weekend and go to a casino or a zoo or something.

So we get our keys and drive to the other building and start dragging our stuff up the stairs, only to find that we do not have a king size bed, and we do not have a micro fridge. The king size bed I can live without, and I just thought that with the weekly rate we just couldn't get a king size bed. But we were supposed to get a micro-fridge. That was kind of the point.

So we drag our stuff back down the stairs and go to the front desk to complain, and the lady says that maintenance will have to bring us a micro-fridge, and that it's after hours and they've all gone home for the day. We'll get it Monday morning.

Okay. So we drive back to the other building and drag our stuff back up the stairs. And the room is smaller than I am used to, but it is very clean and everything works, and I would not describe it as a flea bag.

Now, usually at this point we would head for a Walmart or a grocery store, but there's no point in that since we don't yet have the micro-fridge. And I don't want to go to a nice restaurant either, because I'm not that hungry and I wouldn't have a place to put the leftovers. So we end up at a Burger King, and then we go back to the motel and watch the 4400.

The bed was firm, but for some reason I didn't get much sleep on it. The AC was good, if a bit louder than I am used to. Not that a loud AC is always a bad thing. Sometimes a little noise like that is good to block the outside noises. But for some reason this AC noise was not to my liking. And the bed wasn't king size, which I prefer, but it wasn't especially small either. So I didn't get a lot of sleep and I have no clue what the problems was. I guess just a lot of little things that add up.

The next morning we went to breakfast. At this place, before you go to breakfast, you have to stop at the front desk and get a voucher. Okay. No big deal. So we get our vouchers and go to the breakfast area, and my husband asks if I have any money.

No. Why?

Cause there's a waitress and I usually leave her a dollar.

Okay. I think maybe I have a dollar.

So that was a bit odd. There's a hot breakfast bar, but there's a waitress to bring you coffee or milk or juice. And it was a hot breakfast bar. There were no other choices, except that you could also have a few pieces of fruit. There were no donuts or cereal or bagels. There was toast and pancakes and scrambled eggs and sausage and biscuits and gravy and that sort of thing. It could have been really good, but somehow it wasn't. It just seemed like everything was a little on the crispy side for my liking, except for the potatoes. Not hash browns, just sort of cut up potatoes that had been baked or maybe even boiled. The scrambled eggs were good, but without cheese or pico de gallo to they weren't really that great either.

So after breakfast we went back to our room, but we still didn't have our micro-fridge, so we still couldn't go to the grocery store. So we asked about it again, and we were told it would be about an hour. An hour went by, and still no micro-fridge. So we complained to someone else, and this time one of the maintenance guys overheard, and he said he would get it right away. And soon after that, we found a little refrigerator in our room. We still didn't have our microwave, but we thought it was probably on it's way up.

My husband asked if I wanted to go to the Boardwalk area, which was new and neither of us had ever been there. So we got in the van and headed across the river.

Now we come to one of those "real men don't ask for directions" things. Which usually doesn't describe my husband at all, since he's had to drive all over the country and has learned that if he wants to get to work at a reasonable time he needs to ask for directions. But for some reason he doesn't pick up a tourist map or anything, he just thinks that he's going to head for the other side of the river and it will be obvious when we get near the place.

And so we did drive around all of this tourist stuff, and it would seem to me that we were in the right general area and all we had to do was drive closer to the river and we should see where to go from there. Except for some reason my husband decided to make a left turn away from the river, and then he made a few more turns that lead away from the tourist stuff and the river, and I just have no clue what he thought he was doing.

Soon we are far away from anything that looks familiar, and I don't know where he is going. I don't feel so good, but I don't say anything. I felt sick earlier, but I thought that it was just one of those things that if you convince yourself that you're okay and get on with your day that soon you'll forget that you didn't feel well and you'll probably feel better after lunch anyway. But just this driving around wasn't doing me any good.

But I still don't say anything, cause in my husband's brain even when he's done something wrong it isn't a problem. Somehow my mentioning that he's doing something wrong is a problem, but what he's done isn't a problem. So I don't mention every little thing he does wrong anymore, and it's not like getting lost is a moral issue or anything like that. This isn't something I want to waste my energy on, and he has to get it eventually without my mentioning it.

But no. He drives here, there, and everywhere. Half and hour of this and I can't take it. Where are you going?

I just thought I would drive to something that seemed familiar and try again, but this isn't what I thought either. Maybe we should just find a Walmart and then go back to the motel.

That might be best.

But then we find a Walmart and drive right past it.

At some point we are nearly back to the motel, but instead of going there he gets back on the freeway and heads west.

Where are you going?

I thought I'd go to a Walmart and get some stuff before we go back to the motel.

We passed a Walmart already and you didn't stop.

I don't think that I could find that one again. We'll go to a different one.

So we drive almost back to Texas and go to a Walmart and get lunch-meat and cheese and socks and a few other things and then head back to the motel. I really don't feel well now, so we just go to the Chinese restaurant in the motel. It was good. I felt better.

So we go back to the room and I put the leftovers in the fridge, and I notice that we still don't have the microwave. And I go downstairs to complain about that. And I ask for an iron, cause there's an ironing board in the room and a place for the iron, but the iron is missing. And I'm told that someone will bring the microwave and an iron in about an hour.

My husband goes to work. He wears a somewhat wrinkled shirt, but it's not too bad. But the rest of his clothes definitely need ironing.

Two hours later, I go downstairs to complain again, and they get me an iron. Still no microwave.

A couple of hours later I'm starting to be a bit of a bitch. We're going to pay for two extra nights at place so that we can get a micro-fridge that most places would have anyway, and I'm in a small room and I don't have a king size bed, and we don't have Internet access, and there's no hot tub, and I STILL don't have my microwave.

Someone is going to find me a microwave.

A couple of hours later, someone calls to say that they've found my microwave and they'll be bringing it right up. "Right up" apparently means an hour later, but that's okay. I got the microwave before seven o'clock and had heated up leftover Chinese food for diner.

While all that was going on I got some knitting done. I finished a Dr. Who scarf, except for the fringe, and I started a Slytherin scarf. The next day I started a Gryffindor scarf. By Wednesday I had three scarves mostly done, except for the fringe. I hate doing fringe.

Anyway, I still couldn't get enough sleep on the bed, and I still don't know why. But neither of us was getting enough sleep in Shreveport.

Wednesday we did manage to find that Boardwalk place and looked around at some stores but didn't really buy anything. I saw a big fish in the river while my husband was taking pictures, but he missed it. Then we ate at a gumbo place. It was okay, but not great. I guess I just expect more now.

My husband went to work, and I finished up with the knitting machine and then went for a swim. I just realized that I had spent a lot of the last three weeks in motels and hadn't gone for a swim at any of them. I think that was the first time in a swimming pool all year.

So when my husband gets home he tells me that the rest of the job has been cancelled. This is getting annoying. The same thing happened the week before, and the weeks aren't usually full schedules to start with. We need money once in a while.

So, Thursday morning we pack up and ask if we can leave early without paying for the full week. This is after I've been a bit of a bitch on Monday and complained about having to rent a room for a week to get a micro-fridge and not getting the fridge part until lunch time and the microwave part until dinner time. So I'm expecting to hear that we've committed to staying for a week and we'll have to pay for a week. Which they do start to say, but I'm in luck that the lady at the front desk is not one of the ladies I complained to earlier in the week.

I start to say that if they could just get it down to two hundred dollars that the company would still pay that much, and then they would have the room free to rent over the weekend, so they might get an extra hundred dollars or so out of the deal. Otherwise, if we have to pay for the whole week, we might as well stay the whole week. But we don't really want to stay the rest of the week cause for some reason we're not getting enough sleep.

Before I say anything, she has to go in another room and check on something. She comes back and asks when we checked in, and we tell her about 6:30 on Sunday night. She goes back to the other room, and then comes back to the front desk and tells us that we are in luck. She cannot find our weekly rental contract. I don't remember being asked to sign such a thing, so probably we didn't have one. So we end up paying way less than two hundred dollars, and we go home.

But first we go to the casino. My husband blows twenty bucks on video poker. I put five dollars in a slot machine and leave a bit later with about twenty. So that wasn't too bad.

While we were away...

My mom put the dog to sleep on Monday. She decided that she couldn't deal with an elderly parent and an elderly dog at the same time. And there wasn't a coin toss or anything. She's been thinking of putting the dog to sleep for a while, but she finally did it this week because they decided to let Grandma try living at home again. Letting Grandma go home was a bad idea in my opinion, but I'm not doing any of the work and they do not have to consult me. If she was actually going to die or something, sure, let her go home for a week or so first. And that may be what happens. But I don't think so. I don't think that there's anything especially wrong with Grandma, except that she's just old. She could just keep being old for a long time. Or she could die of a heart attack tomorrow. There's no way to tell, so it seems like if you don't know otherwise you should plan on her living for a while, and she can't live by herself in her own home. She's just too old and frail and it's not going to work.

Tuesday, I missed my big chance to be a zombie. There was a last minute call for extras to be in a zombie movie in Wills Point. That isn't exactly right next door, so with such short notice I probably wouldn't have gone anyway. But it might be fun to do sometime.

The instructions for being a zombie were kinda funny. First, bring your own zombie clothes. Then, if you can be in extra death scenes, bring a separate change of clothes for each death scene. And, remember to bring some other clothes to change into when you're ready to drive home. I guess that going home in death scene zombie clothes might attract unwanted attention.

The excitement that was on the news while we were away had to do with an exploding chemical storage site. Nobody seems to know how a chemical storage site was allowed that close to downtown Dallas. But, there it was, and there was a fire, and then there was what looked like a special effects scene from the Armageddon movie. There was an explosion and flaming projectiles and stuff flying out onto the freeway and maybe some car wrecks and long traffic jams and everything.http://cbs11tv.com/local/local_story_206104605.html

The good news is that one of the three dogs got away. The dogs were chained up, but one of them escaped when his collar melted. His name is Lucky.

And, recently the police found a whole forest of Marijuana. This was especially funny for two reasons. First, it was very near my sister's new neighborhood. Second, the land was owned by a company someone in my family used to work for. Since this happened right before we left town for the week, we did not hear any of the follow-up stories. Apparently there's more than one Marijuana forest. http://cbs11tv.com/topstories/local_story_210205211.html

I've had a bit of fun around here too, but I'll write about that another time.

And maybe if I get started right now, I could really come up with something for the 300th post. Or maybe the 400th post.

Or maybe not.

As some of you may know, I originally started this blog because of a certain Homewrecking-Slut. But after a while I just used the blog to to do the more normal blogging things like keeping a journal, and then I got a few comments and started to have a bit of fun with it. So we don't talk much about the Homewrecking-Slut anymore. It's not forbidden to talk about her or anything like that, but most of the time we have better things to do.

Currently, the blog's only regular feature is Monday Morons. It is a bit of fun to write, and the unfortunate truth is that there are just endless things to write about on the subject. I should try to write a regular feature on something more positive. I keep thinking that I'm going to write this "take over the world" stuff, but I've been writing all this time and so far I've only written one change the world post -- http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/03/when-i-take-over-world-everyone-will-be.html

Writing about morons takes so little effort. I just sit down here and type, after the morons have done most of the work. But the change the world stuff is different, and I should put a little more effort into those. And it's hard. And while I can easily write about morons once a week, writing this other stuff once a week would be difficult. Even trying to write about it once a month might be too much effort.

But keep reading, and I might give it a try. Soon I'll be telling you what's wrong with your sex life and whom to vote for and stuff like that. I might even start a whole new political party.

Or maybe not.

Okay, so I said that I didn't care who was reading my blog and I didn't really want to know, because I didn't want knowing who might be reading something to influence what I was writing. And, for the most part, I still think that is for the best. But then I read this post written by everyone's favorite hairy nurse--http://killerific.blogspot.com/2007/05/welcome-confused-gyno-patients.html After that I thought the whole tracking thing might be fun.

So my husband added something to the blog a few weeks ago, and I've had a bit of fun with it. I still can't just look and see who is reading my blog, but I can see how some people got to my blog. So I can see that my blog was read five times by clicking a link on your blog, but I can't tell if it's because you have at least four readers intelligent enough to check me out, or if you just really miss me.

And I can look at the Geo-tracker and see that I still have a reader in Canada, and a few in England (most of whom don't like the "H" word ), but most readers are in the United States. A few people from other places read once in a while, and there was one hit from Qatar. I had never even heard of that place.

But the really fun thing is to see what people Googled to get to the blog.

Several people Googled stuff like Baptists believe that we're all going to Hell and Everyone is going to Hell and found this one--http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2007/04/almost-everyone-is-going-to-hell.html And while that is pretty much what I meant to say, I'm a bit embarrassed about it cause I wrote Post-Tribulation and Pre-Tribulation backwards, and so the quote that pops up on the Google search is wrong. And somehow I don't think that's what people where looking for anyway.

And there are a few things that fellow fans of science fictions look for that led them here, (TANSTAAFL, Quatermass, Vorlon, Altrusian, etc...) and that totally makes sense. But the thing that I seem to be the authority on this month (other than diet drinks and who is going to Hell) is the Truth about penis. So let me tell you the truth: if you were born with one you should probably keep it, and the rest of us should try staying away from it once in a while. But more people found this particular post -- http://insidioustruth.blogspot.com/2006/09/giant-penis.html after looking for Giant penis or Dick costume, which is what the post is actually about. I think that the numbers keep going up on that one because of my husband testing the tracking thing.

So thanks for stopping by and reading. I hope you like the place. But if you don't, that's just too damn bad, because it's my blog. Feel free to leave comments.

I took a ceramic class during the last spring semester, and it kept me from going completely bonkers. So I plan to take another art class in the fall. I'll probably take sculpture instead. My ceramic teacher keeps trying to teach a sculpture class, but it keeps getting cancelled due to lack of interest. I think that they have to have ten students signed up or the class gets dropped. So the teacher kept trying to get us all interested in taking sculpture in the fall.

Okay. So I go online and sign up for a sculpture class. And I'm not sure that I've even signed up for the right thing, because the teacher's name isn't there. It just says faculty. Maybe he's teaching half of the class and someone else is teaching half the class. Anyway, I didn't see anything else like that listed, so I signed up and hoped I had the right class.

I believe I signed up on July 20th.

When I got home from Shreveport, I found something in the mail that said I had been dropped from the class. And at first I thought that the class itself had been canceled again, which wasn't totally unexpected. But I just thought it was way too early for something like that to happen.

After reading the rest of the letter, it turns out that I had been dropped due to lack of payment.

So that was odd. It had only been a week.

Anyway, different schools have different payment deadlines, and I so had UTA's stuck in my head I wasn't really paying too much attention. But I'd never heard of anyone giving you less time than a week during regular registration. During late registration you have to pay that same day, because you have to be paid up in full before class starts. But the during regular registration you usually have a long time to pay. At UTA I would sign up for something in April that they didn't expect payment for until August, but paid half as soon as I could just to be on the safe side. At UTA they couldn't drop you until the first day of class if you'd paid at least half.

So I go back online and sign up for the class again. And then I look at the payment instructions and find out that registration has been divided up into these two week blocks, and that if you sign up during a certain two week period you have to pay by the end of the two week period. Not the next two week period, but the same two week period. So if you sign up on the first Monday of the two week period you have almost two weeks to pay, and if you sign up during the first Friday of the two week period you still have a week to pay, but if you sign up during the second Friday of the two week period you have to pay that day.

So I had signed up on the 20th and was dropped for non-payment on the 23rd.

Okay. So to make sure that this didn't happen again we headed over to the school, and the doors were looked.

I knew that they didn't have classes on Fridays, cause most colleges I am familiar with do not have summer classes on Fridays. But I thought that most of the business offices had the same M-F 9-5 or so schedule that they always had. There was one school I went to that didn't have Friday classes during the fall or spring semesters either, but they were still open on Friday and were happy to take your money then.

Okay, so you are allowed to register for a class on a Friday even though you have to pay for the class that same day, but you can't go to the campus that day to pay because there's no one in the office.

Whatever.

I'm going to have another go at it either this morning or tomorrow. And my instructor hasn't answered my email yet, so I still don't even know if I signed up for the right class.

So we were trying to decide if we were going to follow the lemmings to The Simpson's Movie or pretend to be adults and go watch No Reservations instead, when we saw that Sunshine opened this weekend too. Well, we have to go see that. I mean, whenever someone is attempting a serious science fiction movie, we should go and see it. Maybe we don't see all the zombie movies, but we try to keep up with the serious stuff.

Okay, I hadn't even heard of this movie until like a week ago, and I usually try to keep up with such things. Anyway, the movie got somewhat limited release, so we had to go to Grapevine Mills to see it. The matinee tickets were seven dollars. My usual place only charges three.

Sunlight is about a group of eight astronauts who will have to go and try to fix the sun in about fifty years. The idea is that if you explode this giant bomb inside the sun that the sun will go back to normal and stop dying. So I guess that there are already problems with the movie. Like the sun can't just die that fast without us already noticing something. And I'm not sure about the science of the project, but maybe there could be this super genius guy who happens to have the right idea at the right time. I have doubts about us getting to that level of space travel within fifty years, but I guess if the whole planet pulled together for something really important that we could do it. But I really have serious doubts about the solar shields. I just can't picture us making anything like that in fifty years.

But if you don't go in thinking about the fifty years in the future thing, you can pretty much ignore the date. They are eight people alone on a spaceship and soon out of contact with anyone else. It doesn't really matter what year it is.

I think that the ads for Sunshine tell you that it's first sci-fi thriller of the twenty-first century and compare it to Alien and 2001. If you go in expecting either of those, I think that you'd be disappointed. I would think that it's more like The Event Horizon or Supernova, or maybe Sphere.

I'm going to say that I liked it, but I don't think that it will ever be near the top of my list.

Poor Cillian Murphy. I think that if I saw this blue-eyed boy I'd run the other way. If he doesn't end up playing a lunatic, he at least ends up being chased by one. He's the bad guy in The Red Eye and he's not so nice in Batman Returns either. I think that I first saw him in 28 Days Later.

Murphy is the genius scientist on the crew who came up with the project idea and built the bomb that is supposed to fix the sun, etc.... Seven years ago another ship (Icarus 1) was sent out with the same plan, but the ship just disappeared and the sun did not get fixed. So when the second ship (Icarus 2) was sent out, Murphy gets picked to go on the mission just in case something goes wrong. There won't be time or resources to build a third ship and try again. Either this works or it doesn't.

One of the astronauts just seems really in love with the sun. Only the computer safeguards prevent him from looking at the sun all day and going blind. Sorry buddy, but you have a job to do. You can blind yourself on the way home if you want to.

The captain often watches a top-secret recording made by the captain of the Icarus 1. They had some trouble with a bunch of really small meteors. They were able to fix the damage, but the captain of the Icarus 1 sounded a little too excited about the whole thing. Not scared, but rather happy.

They are about to pass a point at which they will lose contact with Earth. Their calculations for this were a bit off, and it comes about a week earlier than they had expected. They record final messages for their loved ones back home. One of them doesn't get sent in time, and he takes it out on the genius guy who built the bomb. Not sure why it's his fault, but that's what he does.

They watch Mercury as it moves in front of the sun. It was a cool scene in the movie, but now that I think about it, it's probably all wrong.

They complain about the food. These people have nice food, with fresh carrots and such from the oxygen garden. They take turns cooking, and someone has a problem with the cook. These people are going to be stuck with each other for several years, so someone is always going to have a problem with something.

The lady who takes care of the oxygen garden is happy because they've stored enough extra oxygen to get them to the mission and a fourth of the way home. Not that they even need extra oxygen in storage as long as they have the garden.

And then they get a message that was sent from the Icarus 1 six and a half years ago. Now things get really interesting. If this were the Enterprise, we would now go to the Icarus 1 on the remote chance that there might be survivors and to find out what happened to prevent them from completing their mission, etc.... But this is not the Enterprise, this is the Icarus 2, and they are on an important mission to restart the sun and save Earth. They can't just change course to visit the Icarus 1, even if there are survivors. They don't even get to the part in the discussion about what to do with the survivors if they find any.

But they decide to change course to visit the Icarus 1 anyway. Not to rescue anyone, but to see if the bomb is still in working order. They way, if the bomb on Icarus 2 doesn't work, they can try again.

Great. So the captain says go for it, and they do the math and change course.

And then the alarm goes off.

Okay, the math for the course change was done and re-done and then done a third time before they actually changed course. But, when they changed course the solar shields needed to be adjusted. Not a lot, just one and a half degrees. But someone forgot to do that, so Icarus 2 started losing feathers or something. Everything seemed okay, but they couldn't be sure because the sensors weren't working. Someone had to go outside and take a look.

So the captain decides to do that job himself, but then someone reminds him that the job will require at least two people. Although someone else volunteers to be the second person, somehow Murphy ends up being the second person. I can't quite follow the logic on that one. I'm not sure who on the ship is actually expendable at this point, but I'd think that Murphy would be pretty far down the list.

But out they go, and the ship gets turned at an angle so that they can work in the shade. Turning the ship caused two of their communication towers to melt, and they're upset by this because they're not sure that they can get home in one piece without them. Still it had to be done that way, and it sets off an alarm. Someone turns off the alarm, and so they are not warned about the fire in the oxygen garden until it is too late.

So Murphy and the captain are outside making repairs to four of the plates in the solar shield. And the captain tells Murphy to get back inside the ship and he'll finish the last of the repairs by himself. But the ship has to be turned back the way it was before the captain can escape. And Murphy just stands there at the edge of the solar shield and watches it happen, nearly getting killed himself.

With the Icarus 2 back on it's course to connect with Icarus 1 they are now missing two communication towers and the oxygen garden and most of their stored oxygen. So not only is there not enough oxygen for the seven remaining astronauts to complete the mission and go home, there is only enough oxygen for four of them to complete the mission. The crew member who failed to adjust the shields after he changed course is sedated to keep him from committing suicide, the two women guide the Icarus 2 towards Icarus 1, and the four remaining men go into the airlock and walk onto Icarus 1 and have a look around.

Now I start to have problems with the story. I would have liked it better if they didn't add some of the stuff that happens next.

On the Icarus 1 they find out four important things. The good news is that the bomb still appears to be in good working order. The bad news is that they can't use the bomb because the cooling system doesn't work. And that wasn't due to a malfunction or an accident. Someone did something to the cooling system. The oxygen garden is in good working order and has almost seven years of unchecked plant growth and plenty of oxygen. But everything on the ship is covered with a thick layer of dust, and they find that at least three of the crew committed suicide by sitting in the observation room without any shielding.

Something goes wrong with the airlock on Icarus 1, and they've only got one spacesuit to get back to Icarus 2. So, they put Murphy in the suit, and two of them try to get back to the Icarus 2 by holding on to Murphy. One of them has to stay behind on the Icarus 1 to manually open the airlock.

The astronaut who stays behind commits suicide almost immediately by joining the other three in the unshielded observation room. So what's up with that? If he wanted, he could probably find food growing in the oxygen garden and wait to be rescued. If someone came to rescue him, it would take several years, but it wasn't impossible. I doubt many people wouldn't ultimately choose suicide, but why do it just right then? Wouldn't you have a look around and see if you could somehow send oxygen and other supplies to the Icarus 2? Wouldn't you at least want to live long enough to watch the Icarus 2 complete it's mission?

Murphy gets back to the ship okay. One of the astronauts is then lost in space, while a third one makes it back with Murphy and ends up with a bit of frostbite but seems to be okay. So that leaves five astronauts, and they only have enough air for four of them to complete the mission. So someone is going to have to kill the poor sedated guy who didn't adjust the shield.

Only he seems to have already committed suicide.

Now comes the part of the story that could have just been left out entirely. Freddy Krueger, captain of the Icarus 1, got onto the Icarus 2 while the four men were looking around Icarus 1. God told him not to allow the mission to be completed, and that mankind was supposed to die and he was supposed to be the last man left alive. To make sure that God's plan works out, he has to destroy the cooling system and them kill everyone on the Icarus 2.

He almost gets Murphy, but Murphy gets away and locks himself in the airlock. Freddy manually locks the airlock from the other side and goes off to kill the lady who takes care of the oxygen garden. The other man he doesn't have to kill, because he freezes to death trying to fix the cooling system.

So we end up with the other female astronaut, Murphy, and Freddy Krueger inside the big bomb, which will now have to be detonated manually. I don't like this part very much. The camera doesn't stay focused for more than a few minutes here and there. It seemed for a moment that the last woman might be catching Freddy's insanity, but then she rips the skin off of his arm so that Murphy can get away and detonate the bomb.

And all of this is going on inside the sun.

????

Murphy has this magic moment after he has detonated the bomb and he can see that it worked. So not only did he survive a trip inside the sun, but the bomb doesn't kill him either. So I don't know what that's supposed to mean. Was that a vision that he had right before he died, or has he somehow become part of the sun?

Anyway, there is this scene of snow in Sydney, but the sun has been fixed and everything will be okay.

I could have done without that whole Freddy Krueger thing. I would have liked it better if some of the movie had been more like Cold Equations. Why couldn't it have just been about deciding who was going to be allowed to live long enough to complete the mission and who had to kill the sedated guy and all of that? I guess I'm okay with the Icarus 1 being destroyed by a crazy captain, but it would have been better if they had just found him dead with the rest of his crew. And I think that even that would have been better if the Icarus 1 cooling system was damaged by meteors rather than the crazy captain. There seems to be a lot of crazy people on these kinds of space missions. I didn't need crazy captain to come over to the Icarus 2 and kill everyone there too. I know that cutting out that part would have made a less exciting ending, but isn't saving the world exciting enough?

Thursday, July 19, 2007

Well, the trip to Arkansas ended a bit early. I'm still glad I went. And, I'm trying to look on the bright side, like there's some stuff this weekend that I had to cancel so I could go to Arkansas, and now that I'm back I can try to uncancel some of it.

So I spent half of last week in a not so great motel room so that I could work on the floor. I didn't get as much done as I hoped, but I got the important part done. I tried to do something creative and make grey and black swirls with this leveling stuff. But the black stuff turned out to be thicker than the grey stuff, so I have some lumps. But my husband doesn't think that it's too bad, and anything is better than the awful carpet that was in the hallway.

A while back I bought some latex gloves for a project. Then I misplaced the gloves, so I bought another box of gloves. Then I decided I needed a smaller size and I bought a third box. I used a lot of these gloves while I worked on the floor, but I had plenty of them left. And I used some of the gloves during our last trip to an Arkansas crystal mine, and I planned to make use of them on this trip too.

Sunday, we had one night back in our own bed. Monday I got a few things together and we were on our way to Texarkana. With all the work I'd been doing on the floor I had misplaced some things and neglected to do laundry. So I was missing some things that I normally pack, like underwear. But my a** is smaller these days, so I figured it was time to buy more underwear anyway. So after we checked into the motel, we went and spent a bit more than a hundred dollars, mostly at Walmart. Except for yarn to make a scarf, some very expensive ice cream, spending too much at lunch, and buying tickets to see the Harry Potter movie, it was all stuff that we needed anyway, but I wasn't planning to buy all that stuff in one trip.

And of course I forgot to pack that box of latex gloves, so I ended up buying a fourth box at the Walmart.

The motel I spent half of this week in was better than the one I was in last week. More cable channels. Free breakfast. Not a really wonderful breakfast, but a good motel breakfast. Sausage and eggs and make your own waffles. And an ironing board. And a hair-dryer that I forgot to pack. We ended up spending about four dollars a night more than what he gets reimbursed for, but that's not too bad.

Tuesdays morning we nearly missed breakfast. We stayed in bed too long. I hurt in places I forgot I had. And, like I said, the breakfast they had wasn't bad. Then it was back to the room to watch TV for an hour. My husband got the computer to work most of the time, but there were little weird problems like I couldn't read anyone's comments. So I decided not to post anything. Using the company computer is annoying anyway, since nothing is where I expect it to be.

We went to get a pizza for lunch. This is only the second time I've had pizza since the doctor told us to go on a diet. We're still not on a diet, but we have cut back on the hamburgers and pizza and such. So we bought this pizza and brought it back to the room, thinking we would have leftover pizza later in the week. Then my husband went to work.

I watch some TV and start knitting a scarf. I don't have cable at home. Last week was a lot of work, and now I just get to be lazy and stay in bed. And I'm thinking that since my husband is scheduled to work in Shreveport next week it's silly for him to drive all the way home on Sunday and then drive to Shreveport on Monday. I hadn't planned on staying away for two weeks, but maybe I should.

That idea lasts about two hours. Even with the knitting and the cable TV, I am just going out of my mind bored. I think that a day or two of this would be nice, and I'll probably appreciate being able to sit around doing nothing on Thursday, but Friday and Saturday will be boring, and I wouldn't want a whole second week like this. Besides, I should go home and work on the floor when my husband won't be in the way.

I watch most of My Super EX-Girlfriend, and the Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, and some re-runs of The Incredible Hulk. Not bad stuff, but I am greatly relieved when I remember than my husband gets off early and will probably be back by nine. I watch a re-run of Tru Calling and half of Eureka when he comes in.

He's not happy. He didn't make any money, the rest of the week has been cancelled, and we've paid for the room for six days. The company will probably only pay for two days. So he made like fifty dollars and we've spent like four hundred.

He calms down a bit and we watch the rest of Eureka.

Since we're already here, we might as well go on with our plan to go to the mine. The next morning my husband talks to someone at the desk and finds out that getting some of our money back won't be a problem. Great. We eat breakfast and head for the Hot Springs area.

Of course, I left my latex gloves in the motel room.

This time we went to Ron Coleman's Mining. This is a pretty big place, and it's only like two miles off the main road. It's easy to find and I wasn't worried about something bad happening to the van. We paid our twenty dollars each, and they gave us a couple of bags to put rocks in. My husband took some pictures of the place, and then we took shovels and rakes and implements of destruction and went to join the other tourists.

I think that I cut my right thumb on the first rock I picked up. Without leather gloves, I was going to get some cuts anyway, but it was very annoying to get cuts from just every little thing I touched.

I decided just to get a few big rocks for the garden and take them back to the van before I did anything to get tired. Not that the rocks were that big. And it turned out that I didn't need to bother with that. I ended up with plenty of garden rocks.

I picked up a few things here and there, but probably the good stuff was in the fresh mud brought up in a dump truck. Four other people (an older couple, an accountant, and a professional artist) were seriously going through that stuff. My husband pointed out a couple of things that the Professional had found. Then we went to lunch at Subway.

While we were out for lunch, I bought a fifth box of latex gloves.

When we got back I decided to get in the fresh mud. Nearby, the older couple is trying to make small talk with the Professional and the Accountant. The Accountant married the Professional and gave up her job to travel around the country with him. They made two or three trips here every year to collect material, and they went other places to collect other stuff, and then they spent a lot of time doing art shows. The older couple asked if they ever went to a particular craft show that they were familiar with, and the Professional said that he only did fine art and did not do craft shows. The older couple asked about a different craft show, and the Professional gave up talking to them.

A bit later, the Professional found a large crystal that was not perfect. But he told my husband that he was still happy to find it cause he could use it to make a lamp. My husband was pretty sure that lamp-making counted as a craft, but he didn't say anything.

I found a couple of things that were probably good for lamp-making, and I took the stuff back to the van. There's a place to wash the mud off of your rocks, but I didn't want to spend all day washing stuff. I just got off enough mud to see that it was something that I wanted to keep, and then I put the rocks into heavy trash bags and stacked them in the van. I'm a big wimp and can only carry about half a bucket at a time. It would have been nice to have a wagon or something, but there just wasn't room in the van for the company stuff and all the stuff I like to take on trips.

I saw other people taking things that I didn't even bother looking at. There was a man very happily collecting these not so great looking slabs. Maybe he wanted paving stones. Or maybe he has a garage full of stuff for polishing rocks and these will look very nice when he's finished with them. But for now they don't look like much. There was another man with his family, and they were filling their truck with big white rocks. They didn't look like anything to me. And if you just want a bunch of white rocks for your garden, you can save yourself some work and just get stuff from the reject pile. Somebody else has already done most of the washing, and you can drive straight there and load as much as you want.

The dump truck comes with more fresh mud. I find two pieces that are nice, but not perfect. A woman with her family just walks up and finds like four big perfect points. She didn't really dig or anything. Life is so unfair.

I think that I got twenty dollars worth of stuff, even if it isn't perfect. Now that I've had a chance to look at it, I think that my husband's stuff is better.

We got there about two hours after they opened and we mostly stayed til they closed at 4:30. It was about a two hour drive back to the motel, and I had to sit at an angle because of the rocks on the floor. Our clothes were ruined, which we expected, and my husband just tossed his in the trash. I kept mine because I still have work to do on the floor and in the garden. But I think we'll have to replace the shoes as well, which I should have planned for but didn't.

Thursday was only a three hour drive, but it seemed a lot longer. Driving that day was not part of the original plan. He was supposed to have a regular work day, and I was supposed to sit in a motel room and maybe go for a swim.

I will need a few days to clean this stuff, but I think that most of my stuff will just end up in the garden. My husband has a nice cluster that would be pretty if it wasn't so rust colored. We will probably try the acid out on that one. It was a lot of work, but I'd be ready to go again in a week or so if I got the chance. And it would be nice to go to Georgia and look for amethysts.

Sunday, July 15, 2007

If you are reading this, I am probably out of town. And, when I go out of town, I am often without Internet access. I just never know until I get there.

So Monday Morons may be a day late. Or it may be a lot later than that. I'm not sure.

I have not heard from some of you in a while, and someone who was supposed to email me didn't. So I hope everyone is okay. Once in a while, say hello or something, even if what I've written is totally boring.

Friday, July 13, 2007

During my first semester as a full-time college student, I had to go to the clinic. I wasn't feeling well. I was beginning to worry that something was wrong. Really, really wrong.

I was in a new relationship. I guess I had pregnancy and STDs and that sort of thing on my mind a lot. Not that I was having sex with him yet, but we were talking about it. Or, at least, what were doing at the time did not meet my definition of having sex. We weren't "doing it", but we were getting pretty damn close.

I'd only "done it" with one person, and at the time that was the last person in the world that I wanted to talk to. But I'm sitting there in the clinic, thinking of how I was going to have to tell my new boyfriend that we could never have sex. And I was thinking that I would have to go and talk to this ex-boyfriend and tell him what was going on so that he could warn his ex-girlfriend and his current girlfriend and anyone else who needed to know. I really did not want to talk to him, but of course I would find the courage to do the right thing. I figured if I did have something he would know before I did, but I would have to be sure and tell him just in case he didn't know.

At the time I knew very little about STDs and such. I suppose I don't know that much about the subject now, but at the time I had the idea that if you caught an STD you would know about it within three months, even if you didn't have any lab work done. At the time the only thing that I knew of that a person could have for a year or more without showing symptoms was AIDS.

So I'm sitting in the clinic, and I just know that I have AIDS.

Somehow with all of these thoughts about doing the right thing and being an adult, I kept worrying about my mother finding out. Tell my boyfriend, sure. Tell me ex-boyfriend, sure. Tell my mom, not today.

So I'm sitting there trying to think of how I'm going to find the ex-boyfriend, how he might be married and living in his own house by now, how I would have to get his new address from his mom, and all that sort of thing. And then the nurse comes to get me and I tell her my symptoms. And I stress that I haven't been with anyone that way in over a year and I haven't had a rash or anything so it probably isn't anything that a shot of antibiotics is going to fix. And she asks me a few questions, and some of them don't seem to have anything to do with anything but I answer them anyway.

And I'm pretty much crying at that point, but I ask for an AIDS test.

She tells me that she can arrange for an AIDS test if I really want one, but she doesn't think that I'll need it.

She says that what I had described was a yeast infection.

I was so relieved. I cried some more. She said that she didn't have any medication for me, but that if I would just call the doctor who had recently given me the antibiotics that had caused me to get the yeast infection he would probably give me a prescription without even going in for an exam.

Relieved as I was, I still worried about what my mother would think. The nurse called my mom and told her what the problem was, but I still worried that my mom thought I had an STD. If my mom thought I had an STD, she would figure out that I'd had sex, and then my life would be over.

So that was my one experience of having to tell a sex partner that he needed to go an have a test for STDs. It only got as far as having a conversation in my head. But of course I would have had the conversation for real if it had been necessary. I can't understand why a person would be so evil as to not tell their sex partners that they've been exposed to an STD. But now that I'm out blogging and such I'm finding out that people don't even try to do the right thing. And I just don't understand why other people would think that is acceptable.

Thursday, July 12, 2007

I am quite tired today. After a strange sequence of events which I will not go into at the moment I have ended up with a three night stay at a motel that is practically around the corner from my house. So I'm going to take this opportunity to rip up some more carpet and break some more tiles. And after I get that little area cleaned up I'm going to patch some cracks in the floor and probably spread out a bit of leveling compound, which is something I can't do on a day I actually plan to sleep in my own bed or take a bath in my own bathtub or anything like that.

I'll only get about a fourth of the floor done this time. To do the job properly, you're supposed to do the whole room at once, but I'm having trouble moving the furniture around and stuff like that. Once I get this strip done, I can worry about the rest of it later.

I was happy to rip up the hallway carpet; it was wet and it looked awful anyway. But this stuff doesn't look so bad and it might be okay to just have it cleaned instead of having it removed. It's just that I'm starting to worry about mold and such. I keep picturing myself dying like this CSI character. But that guy took steroids, and I don't, so I'm probably safe. Still, I'm getting the carpet out just to be on the safe side.

I'm making progress, and I've smashed about forty tiles to death today. I'll do thirty more soon, if I can find someplace to move the last bookcase and the exercise bike.

Exercise bike? How did that get in here?

After I do that part of the floor, I plan to go to Arkansas again. I'm not sure if I mentioned that before. My husband is scheduled to work in Arkansas next week. It's not quite in the same area as the crystal mines, but it's close enough, and we're planning to go to another one on his day off.

Tuesday, July 10, 2007

I have been tagged by Diva to tell 8 random things about myself. I am supposed to be tagging 8 other people to do the same, but as usual I won't be doing that. Not sure who I would tag anyway. Between the other people Diva tagged and the people who have already done something similar, I'm not sure that leaves 8 people anyway. But if you want to do it, you're invited. Have at it.

1. I wrote a book that did not get published. I won't tell you the whole story, but it was set in the future, when cheating on spouse (or being the person the spouse cheats with) is punishable by death. And this isn't something that I came up with recently. I started writing that before I got married. I never thought it would have anything to do with me personally, I just thought it was a good idea because of AIDS and all that.

2. I graduated from high school two years early.

3. By contrast, I seem to have spent a good chunk of my life after high school in college or something similar. I've had about seven semesters part-time here and there. The first time around I had four semesters full-time, then two semesters that started out full time but ended up being part-time after I had to drop some classes to get a job. After I went back to school in 2002 I had five full time semesters before I finally ended up getting a B.A. in English. I guess I like school. I worked at a school for a couple of years and audited a few classes. And I'm still planning to take more art classes.

4. Except for about five years after spring 90, I've spent a lot of my non-college time traveling with my husband. We practically lived out of a suitcase for a year and a half, and then later for another two years. The travel has been on and off since fall 04. There were some fun moments, but mostly I didn't like it and only did it because I was so in love. Kinda seems dumb now.

5. I've been engaged four times.

6. I hate been engaged. I don't hate it as much as being stuck with someone who has cheated on me, but I still think that it is a very stressful time. If I ever get engaged again, it will only be for two weeks or so while I plan a trip to Vegas.

7. I used to work with a bear trainer, and I was bit by a lion.

8. My dad was a genius. I don't know my own IQ. I've never tried to find out, cause I'd just die of embarrassment if it was much below 130.

Okay. I was trying to think of stuff that you didn't already know from just reading the blog.

Monday, July 09, 2007

Well, that line probably won't be in the new movie, since "come out" has become something you say to someone you think is gay. But last week I went to see the Transformers, and I saw the trailer for I Am Legend, the third movie made from the Richard Matheson story. The first one was The Last Man On Earth in 1964 and starred Vincent Price. It was soon followed in 1971 by The Omega Man starring Charleston Heston.

The new I Am Legend stars Will Smith. Will Smith is getting pretty good at saving the human race. Wonder if he can do it again?

I had heard rumors about someone making another version of I Am Legend back in 2002. But I thought that maybe the rumor wasn't really about Matheson's story, since 28 Days Later came out just after that. And then there were more zombie movies and remakes of zombie movies, so I could see how a person could get confused. So I'm glad that the rumors turned out to be true.

Matheson's story was published in 1954. The main character is the sole survivor of a plague that turns everyone into vampires. There's a lot of stuff out now about vampirism caused by viruses and plagues that turn everyone into zombies, but I think for the time it was a pretty original idea.

Anyway, the film is scheduled for a December release. And that makes me wonder why I haven't seen the Invasion trailer in theaters yet, since that film is scheduled to be released next month. That's usually a bad sign.

And while I was in the theater, I also saw a trailer for a film by J J Abrams. There are shots of New York being attacked by something, and the event is being recorded by someone with a camcorder. Makes the film look a bit like The Blair Witch Project. There was no title for the film, though a quick Google search finds that it might be a film called Parasite.

This site was also mentioned http://www.ethanhaaswasright.com/, though I can't get all of it to work yet, and I have no idea what Ethan was right about. And it might be totally unrelated to the J J Abrams film. I can't judge yet. I just read that a lot of people think that they are connected.

As for the Transformers movie itself, it wasn't even something that I had planned on seeing until a couple of weeks ago. Seems like when the Transformers were a big deal, I wasn't the right age to appreciate them. And they were marketed at boys anyway. I think maybe my brother had some. So the names were vaguely familiar, but I didn't really know much about them. I wasn't totally thrilled to hear that they were making a movie about them, and I didn't run over to the box office for advance tickets.

The first part of the movie has a lot of fun stuff with the main character buying his first car. And then there are some chase scenes and stuff like that. And then there's the whole bit about who the Transformers are and why they're on Earth and all of that. And then they still have to try to hide from the main character's parents. Then there were a lot more chase scenes and blowing up things and stuff like that.

If you like long chase scenes and blowing things up, you'll probably go see this movie. If you're a guy a little younger than me, you've probably already seen this movie.

Sunday, July 08, 2007

A bunch of people got married Saturday. I think that some of them are a bit weird.

Don't misunderstand. I wish them well anyway. I just think it's weird to pick your wedding day because of the way that the numbers line up. Some of the people were extra weird and decided to get married at seven o'clock.

But some of them got to do cool things. A bunch of them got married at Six Flags on a roller-coaster. If your dream wedding involved getting married on a roller-coaster, Saturday was definitely the right day for you. I'm sure that sort of thing is normally very expensive, but these people probably got to do it for the normal price of admission. Good for them.

Anyway, I didn't realize this was going to be a big deal until Friday. I saw something about it on the news. 7-7-07. Lucky day. Must be time to get married.

Okay, the first I heard about someone getting married on that day was a bit before Christmas. N, sister of one of my friends from the club, had met someone online. So that was already weird, at least to me. After what happened to me, I don't think much of people who have online relationships. I don't see how you can really get to know someone that way. I can see meeting someone online and then having regular dates and falling in love afterward, but I can't understand picking "the one" online and agreeing to marry someone that you've never even met.

And I think N meeting someone online is a bit weird anyway. N is really something to see. She really looks good. I mainly only know her from the Halloween Party. She looks good in everything. All the guys are dying to go out with her. Looks like she'd be too busy with real dates to bother with the online stuff anyway.

N apparently has a type. She dates men who have certain jobs and are about ten years older. Maybe she decided to get married while she was still young enough to get a good-looking guy who was her type. Anyway, this guy is not quite that much older than she is, and he's a firefighter in California someplace.

Her parents are really worried about this. I can't see that I really get what they are worried about. Are firemen not nice guys? She's always getting involved with older men, and so far nothing really bad has happened. The relationships usually don't work out, but I haven't heard of anyone beating her or anything like that. So she goes off with some guy and it doesn't work out, and she moves back home for a bit while she's looking for an apartment, and maybe she meets another guy before she gets the apartment and it all starts over again. Maybe not so great, but I don't get what is so different about this guy. If it's the usual pattern, it won't work out and she'll move back home for a few weeks. I don't get why they even think this time is different.

Anyway, he came here for a visit, and N's parents didn't get a good vibe from him. A month later she moved to California to live with him. They were supposed to get married on 7-7-07. I haven't heard yet if she actually got married or not.

But here's what she said about the date. They were going to get married on 7-7-07 because it was God's day.

Not lucky number seven day. God's day.

Don't misunderstand. I am all for God and having God in your life and having God in your marriage. But Saturday wasn't God's day anymore than any other day. If God is in your life and in your future spouse's life, you can get married on 6-6-06 or 1-13-13 and God will still be there.

If she cares so much about God in her marriage, is she doing the stuff that God really cares about? Did she live with all these other guys and not have sex with them? Did she live with this guy for the last six months and not have sex with him?

Don't get me wrong. If you can live six months with the person you plan to marry and NOT have sex, I think that's wonderful. That would be a good test of the relationship. You could find out if can live together and work through your problems. You could find out if you can get over all of your little disagreements without having sex to smooth things over afterwards.

It's really a great idea, but I doubt many people do that. And I don't think that N has spent the last six months in California being celibate.

Okay. So I wish N and the firefighter well, and I hope N's parents are wrong and everything is fine with them.

Friday, July 06, 2007

As I mentioned before, flood water comes into my house about twice a year. It was probably a known problem when we moved in, but it wasn't made clear to us that water actually would come into the house. We thought it would just make a mess on the patio if we weren't careful to keep the drain clear. And we were told that it was only a serious problem once every three years or so, and we probably wouldn't have to worry about it for a while.

We had a bit of a problem right about the time we finished moving our stuff in. Our attempts to fix the problem probably made it worse. I think this last thing we did would have fixed most of the problem, except that someone unplugged the pump. And there is always the possibility that the electricity will go out when we need the pump, so regardless of how careful we are, it could still happen again.

Most of the time when this happens, water just comes in this room and into the hallway, and if we notice it coming into this room we can usually keep it from going down the hall and getting anywhere else except maybe the bathroom, which is not a problem to clean anyway. I'd already removed the carpet from this room, just because it didn't go with our stuff. But the hallway carpet gets all of the flood water that comes in, which has happened almost ten times now, so it looks pretty bad in the hallway.

So, it was time for the hallway carpet to go. Really, we should have done that when we first moved in, but we didn't want to change the carpet in the other rooms connected to it, so we left it alone. This last time I just had enough, and rather than vacuum I just started ripping out the hallway carpet. That took an hour or two. Vacuuming the water and getting the carpet to dry usually takes days, or maybe a week or two if the weather isn't nice. This was much easier.

Under the carpet is this nasty padding that was also ripped out. Under that is the ugly old tile that was the original floor for the house when it was built in like 1940. And it wasn't like I was going to keep the ugly tile, but I thought that I would leave it for a bit rather than having a bare floor while I was deciding what to replace it with. But, near the walls there is this rotting strip of wood with nails where the carpet was attached, and you can't just leaving rotting wood or nails, so I pulled that up too. And of course that broke a bunch of the tiles, so I had to remove the broken tiles. And trying to get the broken tiles up broke a few more tiles, so I had to remove them too.

Okay, whatever. I decided to go ahead and remove all the tiles in the hallway. But it wasn't as easy as I remembered. Seems like most of the tiles in here came up in one piece. When I tried to lift these it just broke off the corners and left the rest of the tiles stuck to the floors.

Patience my a**, I want to kill something.

I got out a hammer and just kept pounding the floor. The tiles broke into a bunch of little pieces that were a hassle to pick up, but none of them stuck to the floor. Once I got into it, it was kinda fun. Sometimes you just get mad and want to break something, and now I've found just a whole bunch of things that need breaking. I have to wear eye protection, but I'm supposed to do that anyway.

Before I could get too excited about how much fun it was and go looking for a job breaking up tiles and knocking down walls, I got about ten tiles up and then I felt like I was going to pass out. It still felt good to get some work done, but I have to stop and rest for a bit after I've done like six tiles.

I will probably go ahead to do this in two more rooms. The carpet doesn't really look bad in the other two rooms, but now that I've seen the rotting wood and other nasty stuff under the carpet, I'd rather not have it in my house. And in spite of the pump and other precautions, I'm pretty sure that at some point I'll have to deal with another flood, and it would be so much easier to deal with if we didn't have the carpet to dry out. Area rugs would work almost as well for me, and if they get wet I can just drag them outside to clean them, or toss them out and replace them if needed.

Anyway, I was going to the library to get some books about fixing floors, to get some ideas about the rest of the floors. But of course with all the rain I'm not the only person that this has happened to, and the books are all checked out.

All this rain is very strange. It did not stay dry this week like I thought. They say that the worst of it will be done tomorrow, but there's still going to be light rain here and there for a few days next week. While it isn't like it was, and it's not raining all the time, and we even get an hour or two of sunshine here and there, I think that it has rained everyday for at least two weeks. But since the ground was already wet to start with, the water just doesn't have anyplace to go. So even a little rain can cause problems, depending on where you are.

I saw a guy on the news saying he'd had to clean up flood water a dozen times in three months.

I'm not even sure how long it has been raining. It has rained almost everyday since we have been back from Arkansas. I know that there was some rain while we were away. There was a major storm a week or so before we went to Arkansas, which made me a bit nervous about going out of town. And we don't usually get a lot of rain in June. Usually, we get some really bad storm in May, and then it gets really dry after that. The past few years they've talked about drought conditions and kept count of how many days since we've had rain and how many days the temperature has been in the 90s or even 100 or more.

Last year, there were news stories about which recreation places on which lakes were closed because the lake water levels were so low that you couldn't use the boat ramps and stuff like that. This year they were saying how there is so much water that you can't drive to the boat ramp. Some of the restaurants and convenience stores are flooded. There was too much stuff like that to list, so on the news they just reminded everyone that they should check with the individual lakes before they went to their usual 4th of July spots.

Thursday, July 05, 2007

About sixty years ago, a flying saucer was reported to have crashed near Roswell, New Mexico. The event was reported in newspapers across the country, only the be followed the next day by a story claiming that the "flying saucer" had turned out to be a weather balloon.

Years later, different groups of witnesses came forth to tell what really happened at the Roswell flying saucer crash, or the crash at Corona as it is sometimes called. In the eighties, several people wrote books on the subject, decades after most people had forgotten all about it. In the late eighties and early nineties, the public demanded to know what really happened. Then we all learned about something called Project Mogul.

Tourists started visiting Roswell. A few people started museums about flying saucers. Visitors went out to see the crash-site.

And then came the Roswell UFO Festival. There were serious lectures and such, as well as some not so serious stuff. Bike races, movies, a dance, and a costume contest.

It was a bit of fun. Some friends of mine at some of the local clubs went. The next year a bunch more went. By the fiftieth anniversary, this was going to be a big deal.

Harlan Ellison went on television to tell us how stupid we were for having a big party. I've always wondered if he paid for the TV time himself, or if the Sci Fi Channel used to like him so much that they just gave him free air time to say whatever he wanted. The first possibility seems unlikely, but the second possibility seems unlikely as well. Only a dozen or so people like Harlan Ellison, and I only know that because I've met about half of them.

So there was the big party planned, and some people were guessing that half a million people would go. I wanted to go, but I didn't have any money. But I really did want to go.

At the time my husband worked as a traveling photographer at a company that was cheating him. I have signed legal papers that prevent me from talking about it, so I won't say the name of the company. Anyway, my husband's boss at the time was Ms. Big Eyelashes, and she kept promising him that things would get better. And to keep him from quitting, she told him that she could arrange for him to travel to other districts whenever he wanted.

I decided to put this to the test and told her that we wanted to be in Roswell for the 4th of July weekend. I told her that it would not be possible to actually work in Roswell that week, since even if there happened to be a job there at the time that we wouldn't be able to get a room there. But maybe she could get something in the general area, say something that would be a half hour drive, or maybe even an hour.

Sure, no problem.

My friends kept asking me if I wanted to share a room and travel expenses with them on the trip to New Mexico. No, I said. I don't have that much money. Supposedly I'll still get to go, but I can't spare the money to share a room in Roswell with anyone.

I kept asking about it, and Ms. Big Eyelashes kept telling me that everything was fine. She just had to get permission to trade photographers with someone in that district that week. The other district manager was okay with the idea, but she didn't have the schedule yet.

Anyway, the date got closer and closer, and I kept getting offers to go to this thing with other people. A couple of people had to cancel, and the rest of them would rather that someone went who could pay some of the expenses rather than just be short a person and have to make up all of the money themselves.

Thanks anyway, but I really can't afford even that.

I asked Ms. Big Eyelashes again, and again she said everything was fine.

A friend of mine offered to take me along, and he didn't ask for any money. But he'd just remarried, and I didn't know his new wife that well. I thought she might not like another woman tagging along. She might have different ideas about the trip. Having to take two kids on the trip was one thing, but having an extra woman on the trip is different.

Thanks anyway.

I asked Ms. Big Eyelashes again, and again she doesn't say anything useful. I'm starting to get very annoyed with her. Not that I wasn't annoyed with her already, but I was started to get really annoyed about this trip to New Mexico in particular. If she couldn't do it, she should just admit it and get it over with. If the trip is going to happen we need to know where specifically so that we would know where to reserve a room. That sort of thing isn't normally a problem, and we rarely make reservations, but this was different. I figured we would probably be working in Artesia or something, but if we didn't hurry we wouldn't be able to get a room there either. Roswell didn't have enough motel rooms for all the people going to the UFO Festival, and maybe all the rooms in Artesia would be taken too.

At one point Ms. Big Eyelashes said something really stupid. She said that she had the guy on the phone and he was making up the schedule, but she didn't know which week I wanted to be in New Mexico. It wasn't like this year, with the 4th being on a Wednesday. Not sure if the weekend before or the weekend after gets to be the 4th of July weekend when the 4th is on a Wednesday. But this was not the case that year, and the 4th was either on Saturday or maybe Sunday. The work week for us at the time was Thursday through Monday, so there was no doubt which week I was asking about when I told her I wanted to be in Roswell for the 4th of July weekend.

A week later she tells my husband she's arranged for him to work in Brownfield, Texas on the week in question.

Not even in the right state. I don't know if it was even the right district, but it's not close to Roswell. It's like a two or two and a half hour drive between Brownfield and Roswell. There's no way that I could get to the UFO Festival if I was staying in Brownfield. And Brownfield is a bit of a drive from here. It just wasn't worth going there at all.

Then she tells me that if my husband doesn't work in Brownfield that week he'll have no work at all. The schedule is already made up, and there's nothing for him in his regular district.

Fine.

The Festival was Thursday through Sunday, with most of the good stuff being on Saturday. My husband worked Thursday through Monday. We had put a camper shell and such on the truck for carrying the photo equipment, so I was unable to drive the truck myself. My husband couldn't drive two hours, drop me off at Roswell, drive back to Brownfield, go to work, drive back to Roswell, get me, and then drive back to Brownfield. That would have taken between seventeen and nineteen hours. I could have gotten a ride from Artesia, or maybe even from Carlsbad, but not from Brownfield. It just wasn't even worth thinking about it.

We decided since we were stuck with the schedule that we might as well go a day early and drive to Roswell anyway.

So we go to Roswell on that Wednesday before the Festival and there is really nothing to do except for the stuff that's always there. So that isn't very much. And there was someone selling hot sauce, but we didn't buy any. We went to Roswell's regular museum (with art and regular science stuff, not flying saucer stuff), and we went to a couple of the flying saucer museums and stores. And it was crowded everywhere we went, cause about half of the half million people who wanted to go to the Festival were already in town looking for something to do, so we all ended up being at the same places. But I didn't see any of my friends from the clubs.

I did see Stanton Friedman. I didn't hear him speak or talk to him or anything, I just saw him. In fact, I think I stepped in front of a camera when someone was trying to interview him. Sorry about that. Did I mention that the place was crowded?

You know what happens when half a million people go out to New Mexico in July?

They sweat. They sweat a lot. We went to the planetarium show. It was a sold out show. And it did not smell good.

It was too crowded to see a movie at the UFO museum, and there was no reason to stay in town to watch a regular movie that we could see just as well in Brownfield. So, we headed back. I think that was the opening day of the first Men In Black movie. We were surprised that the little failing down theater in Brownfield had it already. On the way out you get to vote on what movie the theater shows next week, even if you're not going to be in town next week.

So my friends went the next day and the day after that and Saturday and Sunday and just had all kinds of fun. I heard that Will Smith hung out for a while. A bunch of my friends were in the costume contest. Some of them got their pictures in magazines, and one of them was paid five hundred dollars to be on the book cover of a book about Area 51.

I spent the rest of the week stuck in a motel room in the middle of nowhere. There was nothing to do except go to Walmarts and maybe go to the movie theater, but we'd already done that on Wednesday.

So this year I was vaguely aware that it was the 60th anniversary of the Roswell crash, and they were having the UFO Festival. I even looked at the schedule of events and such. I decided that it probably wasn't worth it. It didn't look like the serious UFO people were going to be there, and if any of my friends from the clubs are going they didn't mention it.

Turns out that the serious UFO people are going to be there, but they just didn't get top billing on the ad that I saw. The costume contest and such as that were more important. And there's a special screening of the 50s version War Of The Worlds followed by a talk with the actress who starred in it.

So maybe it would have been fun, but by the time I thought that it might be fun it was too late for me to plan a trip. Besides, we've spent all of our money on cameras and trips to Arkansas and such.

Wednesday, July 04, 2007

I don't know what a Saurian is, but in the 23rd century, they make brandy. Or they will make brandy. Whatever.

Anyway, when they were filming the original Star Trek series in the sixties, they needed a bottle of Saurian brandy to film a certain scene. And, rather than wait four hundred years for the Saurians to make one, they used a Dickel bottle instead.

A few days ago, it was my brother's birthday. And I have one of these bottles, and he was saying how if I ever found another one that he would like to have it.

And it just so happened that I found one of these earlier this week. And I thought, that's good, cause I can give him this bottle for his birthday. Let's see today is....

Ooopps, missed his birthday. Never mind, he'll still like it even if it is a few days late.

My brother originally wanted to invite everyone over to his place on the 4th and have a big BBQ thing. But he decided that he didn't have enough money and he'd do that next year. But he still wanted to have people over for hotdogs and such, but a few weeks ago he had some unexpected expenses and decided that he couldn't do that either. So we were not invited over for hotdogs, because he couldn't afford the hotdogs. I forgot this part of the discussion, and when the phone rang I thought it was him reminding us that we were supposed to come over for hotdogs.

Oh, sorry. I hit the wrong button on the speed dial.

Hey, are we still coming over for hotdogs?

No. I'm out of money and I didn't buy any hotdogs.

No hotdogs?

No hotdogs. I am really broke. I am really, really broke.

Okay. Can we come over in a bit anyway? We got you something.

Sure. Mom wants me to do something later, but you can come over now, or later. Whatever.

Okay. Whatever.

Then I took a nap or something. Soon after that my husband and I were discussing lunch plans. My brother called back to see when we had decided to stop by. My husband and brother talked about hotdogs and decided that there was no reason that we should not have hotdogs. Just that my husband would have to buy them.

So I get ready and we go to the store, and it starts pouring down rain, so we decided against the whole outdoor grill thing. But we can still have hotdogs, just without the charcoal and the cooking outdoors and such.

There was a bit of confusion at the checkout about which hotdogs were on sale and such. By the time we got done at the store it had stopped raining. But we hadn't bought any charcoal, and we were not going back in the store.

So we presented my brother with the Dickel bottle and he was very happy to get it. And then we started cooking the hotdogs and toasting buns and chopping onions and such. And then my mother called.

My mother had wanted my brother to do something for her like three or four hours ago, but then she wasn't ready to go when she originally said, so my brother decided to do other stuff rather than just wait for her to call.

So now we're getting ready to eat lunch, and she wants to go wherever it is, and she doesn't get why my brother isn't ready to just jump in the car and rush right over to help her. And the place that she wanted to go was open for regular business hours and isn't going to close til nine, so there's really no hurry. But she doesn't see it that way, and now she's ticked at all three of us for ruining her plans for the day.

About Me

I am an artist, but not a professional. I love Star Trek. I would probably still marry Mr. Spock if I were available. I will probably write the geat American novel someday, but it will probably not be published.